The FamilySearch Family Tree is a wiki-style tree. This means the tree is a shared tree among the users. Users can add, change, and in some cases delete person profiles as well as add and remove sources. The process of adding a new person, like Eva Snellgrove, to the tree is rather simple.

While working through Henry J. Snellgrove’s descendants, the next child to work on was Eva Snellgrove. I added Eva to my Ancestry tree, but she was not listed with the family in FamilySearch. She needed to be added as a new person.

Review the record hints for Eva Snellgrove

The record hints on Ancestry for Eva Snellgrove suggested her married name was either Crisp or Cripe. One record hint was for a divorce from Louis J. Crisp in Florida. To confuse matters even further, Eva’s Find A Grave memorial showed that Eva was buried next to Lawrence Cripe. Are Louis and Lawrence the same person? Could Eva have married a Louis first and the Lawrence? Did a census enumerator record Eva’s husband wrong?

After looking for additional records for Eva on Ancestry, it became clear that I had mixed up a Louis J. Crisp with a Lawrence Cripe. Louis J. Crisp was living in an entirely different county in Georgia from where the Snellgroves were living in 1920 and 1930. The location difference is not an immediate concern, but it should have raised a question. After a bit more digging, I found a Find A Grave memorial for Louis J. Crisp that is entirely different from the memorial connected to Eva Snellgrove.

The draft card for Lawrence Cripe and the Find A Grave memorial made it clear that Eva had married Lawrence Cripe. This required some clean-up work on my Ancestry tree. I removed the records that mentioned Louis J. Crisp and the daughter Helen. This also required removing mentions in the Ancestry timeline for Louis. The profile for Louis J. Crisp was changed to Lawrence Cripe and the daughter Helen was removed from the tree.

Occasionally I accept record hints on faith to see if they are correct. But an initial acceptance often requires later analysis. As I continued to try and work through records for Eva and her husband Lawrence, mistakes can be caught and cleaned up. If this happens to you, it can be fixed. My Ancestry tree is a working tree so mistakes occasionally do appear.

Eva did not have any record hints that tied her to her parents Henry J. and Leah Snellgrove. As I worked through Eva’s siblings, an obituary mentioned Eva Cripe as a surviving family member. This mention helps to confirm that Eva married Lawrence Cripe.

Step 1: Click on Add Child

Now that we know who Eva Snellgrove is, we can add her to her family on the Family Search Family Tree. Begin by navigating to Eva’s father Henry J. Snellgrove. Scroll down to where the family is listed and Click on Add Child.

A box will pop-up with a search form. FamilySearch will search their database to look for matches already existing on the Family Tree. Fill in all the details including complete name, birth and death dates. In some cases it may help to add a spouse or other relative.

Step 2: Create person on Family Tree

If no match is found, click on the button to create a person. This will create a new person detail or profile page on the Family Tree. The new profile is connected to a family and is not added in isolation. Nearly all people added to FamilySearch are added by connecting them to an existing person/profile already in the database.

Eva has now been added as a child of Henry J. Snellgrove and Leah Minix.

Click on either Eva’s name in the pop-up box or the person link to go to Eva’s detail page.

Step 3: Add Record Hints

Eva’s new detail page has no sources. When adding a new person to the Family Tree it is nice to take the extra step to add sources. It takes a few minutes for record hints to appear on a new detail page. If there are no record hints, it is possible to search for records right from the detail page. Click on FamilySearch in the Search Records box.

Many of the record hints will be identical to the records hints that we looked at in Ancestry. Add these sources again to Eva Snellgrove on FamilySearch.

Modify the search by also searching for records for Eva Cripe. A modify search box is available on the right side of the search results page. Change Eva’s last name to Cripe and search again. Additional record hints will likely appear. All of these should be added to her detail page as well.

Step 4: Add or Connect Family Members

Now that Eva has been added to FamilySearch, we can add her spouse and children. In this case we need to add her spouse Lawrence J. Cripe. The process is similar, except this time we click on Add Spouse.

After filling out the search box to add a spouse, click on search. In this case, Lawrence J. Cripe was already in FamilySearch, so click on Add Match.

This will add Lawrence J. Cripe as Eva’s spouse.

The final step is to clean up the detail/profile page for Lawrence J. Cripe. This includes adding complete birth and death dates and sources. A closer look at Lawrence shows that his parents need a bit of clean-up work. You can see that this kind of descendancy research creates a chain reaction of family history work.